Infomercials Find Their Way to Television’s Prime Time

THE last two Saturday nights, CBS’s prime-time lineup included “Game Show in My Head,” “48 Hours Mystery” — and lots of infomercials.

The two-minute commercials, for a DVD set of “The World at War” and a CD of relaxing classical music, both from Time Life, ran during almost every show on the network’s recent Saturday nights.

It is a sign of just how bad the advertising market is: infomercials are running during network prime time, filling slots that automobiles and banks once owned.

“The economy is the No. 1 focus for everyone, and it affects the advertisers and the rates,” said Pat Boos, the senior vice president for broadcast, acquisition and marketing at Direct Holdings Americas, which licenses the Time Life brand.

“When someone pulls off the air, like a pharmaceutical or medical company or a sports company, the networks sometimes find themselves with last-minute dead space,” she said. “We can come in and say, we’ve got a tape ready, we’ve got the product ready.”

Ms. Boos said that Time Life was running double the number of prime-time spots that it did a year ago. Networks try to avoid infomercial advertisers, because they pay “a fraction of what general advertising costs,” said Nancy Duitch, the chief executive of Vertical Branding, which runs infomercials for its products like the Steam Buddy and the Nicer Dicer. Although her rates vary, she said she often paid as little as 5 percent of what a general advertiser would.

Infomercials, or direct-response ads, promote a product that can be bought through a Web site or a phone number, often accompanied with blandishments like “but wait, there’s more!”

For networks, the challenge with infomercials is not their quality, but their price: infomercials qualify for much cheaper rates than regular commercials do.

In exchange for the lower prices, infomercial producers are given no guarantees about when their ads will run. The networks give priority of time to the full-price ads, which usually take up the slots during prime time and other popular times. When the networks cannot find advertisers to pay the premium time slots, they will use direct-response ads instead.

Like most direct-response advertisers, Barbara Carey, the president and founder of the Akasha Group, which sells the SpinLash and Hairagami products, says she often spends as little as $1,000 on a commercial slot.

“Usually, network television isn’t a place to go because the efficiencies are cost prohibitive for direct-response advertisers to go there,” said Richard Gagnon, the chief media officer of the advertising agency Draftfcb.

When a network shows lots of direct-response ads during popular programs, it suggests that not only are they asking lower rates, but also that regular advertisers are deciding not to advertise.



“There are some significant economic issues going on in our world that are affecting television inventory,” Mr. Gagnon said.

The money advertisers spent declined 7.5 percent on network TV, and 5.5 percent on cable, from 2007 to 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a firm that tracks ad spending.

Photo

Infomercials, which usually pay lower fees, take more prime-time slots as traditional advertisers, like automakers and banks, retreat.

Cable is also increasingly turning to direct-response ads. The top cable news networks, despite strong ratings from the election and inauguration, have been filling prime-time ad slots with infomercials.

During the presidential election campaign four years ago, Ms. Duitch said she ran CNN spots that cost $100,000. This fall and winter, as the 2008 election unfolded, some CNN prime-time spots have cost only $9,000, she said. (CNN declined to comment, saying it did not discuss its rates.)

“The drop has just been amazing,” said Ms. Duitch, whose ads have run during peak hours on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and in local markets on ABC, CBS and NBC. Ms. Duitch said she had increased her prime-time spots by about 50 percent over last year.

A. J. Khubani, the chief executive of TeleBrands, which sells products like the PedEgg, a callus remover, and EZ Combs, a hair accessory, said that his spots used to run in the afternoon or in late-night slots. In the last few months, though, they are regularly running on CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and Fox News during prime time. Over all, Mr. Khubani said, his prime-time advertising had increased by about 20 percent over last January.

“I like to say that we’re getting beachfront property at trailer park prices,” Mr. Khubani said. “We’re clearing stuff at prime time, which we almost never do.”

Print, radio and Internet companies also filled space with these ads. For example, a full-page ad for an Amish room heater has been running in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.

The increase in direct response has been more pronounced on television, because networks cannot easily add or lengthen programs to fill empty time slots. January tends to be a big infomercial month because advertisers concentrate on the holidays, leaving inventory available afterward.

At NBC, which has run a handful of infomercials in the last two months, “the number of direct-response spots is common for this time of year, and consistent with years past,” said Liz Fischer, an NBC spokeswoman said. At MSNBC, she said, there had been a decrease in direct-response ads, she said. CBS, which has been running some direct-response ads on Saturday nights, suggested it was because its ratings had been good.



“Our strong ratings have afforded us the opportunity to sell a variety of new inventory, rather than run make-goods,” said Shannon Jacobs, a CBS spokeswoman. “Make goods” are ads from existing advertisers that networks run when they fail to reach the ratings promised for earlier ads.

A Fox News spokeswoman, Dana Klinghoffer, said the network had set aside inventory for “make-goods,” which it did not need to fulfill, and was turning to some direct-response advertisers. Also, she said, financial, automotive and pharmaceutical advertisers had reduced their spending.

Greg D’Alba, the executive vice president of CNN ad sales, said that direct-response ads did not necessarily mean cheap ads.

“It’s true in general when it comes to other mediums, other networks, but it’s not necessarily true with CNN,” he said when asked if infomercial producers paid reduced rates.

ABC and Fox had not run any direct-response ads during their national prime time in December and January, according to representatives for the networks. Local stations, however, are allowed to sell their portions of the ad time as they like.

Ms. Carey said she was now worried that advertising time would become harder to get, as so many infomercial companies were vying for it. “It’s tightening up a bit,” she said.

Still, she said, “the as-seen-on-TV business right now is booming. It’s a very good place to be.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: As Seen on TV (and Increasingly in Prime Time). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe